Reasons to love Facebook
I just never really got into it. I played Scrabulous with some online friends, but that was the extent of it. I did the rare search for ex loves and all that, but I never got further than their public pages. I let sleeping dogs lie, for the most part. I routinely forgot about Facebook for months at a time.
Then, about two months ago, nearly everyone from my adolescence in Saudi Arabia got on FB and honestly, it has been downright magical. We had all scattered to the farthest corners of the Earth, in a time before email - and even then, we were ridiculously dedicated to letter writing - but eventually, we all lost touch.
We had a reunion in 2004 that changed my life - when you are an expat kid, you can NEVER go home - but this was the next best thing. Friends are indeed the family you choose. Many of us got on regular emails and updates and saw each other on business and pleasure trips. Even though we couldn’t go revisit the old hangouts, we did it expat-kid style, in random cities, just reconnecting and assuming relationships that were just paused, never ended.
And then everyone from back then discovered Facebook and my mind was once again blown. I just got a message from one of my closer friends and neighbors - someone I haven’t spoken to since 1986. He is a proud Muslim who lived amongst foreigners in his own country (albeit a very American enclave) and he taught me everything I know about the personal, practical side of Islam. He lived across the street - I ate dinner with his family and babysat his younger brothers when I was grounded, which was often.
I was the face of Americans to his family and he was the face of Islam to mine. My dad admired his drive, ambition, and manners. For me, he was just the gorgeous guy across the street who I had to try to beat out for top grades in the class, and one of my closest friends. We had nothing and everything in common.
I actually welled up, seeing his message, which was exactly what I would have expected from him.
